MEDIA RELEASE

Councils bear cost of accreditation burden

For immediate release on 2 June 2009
 

“Councils are to be congratulated for having successfully achieved accreditation as Building Consent Authorities in rapid time,” says Kerry Prendergast, Local Government New Zealand vice-president and its spokesperson on funding, performance and practice.

“However, though phase 1 of the scheme is now firmly embedded in council processes, its benefits have been overshadowed by the huge costs incurred by councils to get to this point.”

Ms Prendergast was speaking after the release of an independent report into the first part of the accreditation scheme which reveals its implementation as overly bureaucratic, lacking in direction and unlikely to fix the systemic failures endemic in the country’s building systems.

“The report highlights a need by Government to think very carefully before it imposes regulations such as these onto councils in the future,” says Ms Prendergast.

The report states that though local councils understood the need to improve the quality of buildings to minimise risks around leaky homes many were ill-equipped for the scale of the implementation and received inadequate government support in instigating it.

It adds: “Accreditation schemes of this scale normally take five years to complete. All parties should be commended for gaining registration within the two-year timeframe allotted to them.”
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